


Though Every Thread Is Torn

by telemachus



Series: Gigolas zoo-verse AU [8]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Aging, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Illness/injury, M/M, Truth, Zookeeper AU, layers of personality, parenting, real and percieved, step-parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 12:52:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13524651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telemachus/pseuds/telemachus
Summary: Quite possibly the final chapter in the Zoo-verse (though i think i said that before).Caradhil is home from the hospital, but there are more challenges ahead. And some unreliable narrative.





	Though Every Thread Is Torn

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Leonard Cohen
> 
> "Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn -   
> Dance me to the end of love."
> 
>  
> 
> .

"Oh, and there was someone in looking for you. English, by the accent, older than me, about 'Thwan's age I'd guess. Didn't give his name - said it was personal," he shrugs, as though it can't be important, "I offered to take his contact number, see if you wanted to follow it up, but he laughed."

"Probably someone who used to work here - there," I say, still having to remind myself it is no longer my zoo, no longer my problem, that all of this is only his courtesy, his kindness to his stepfather.

He nods, and speaks of other things. As he is about to leave, he adds, 

"Funny thing, that chap, he had a child, saw him later on with him and his wife - at least, I suppose she was his wife - child had exactly your hair colour. Unusual, that's why I noticed. Same sort of age as my Libby."

Speaking the name, he looks at his watch, and squeaks. Running late, again.

Off he goes, into the next thing, always busy, not enough hours in the day, needed everywhere.

And I ache for the days when that was me.

 

 

 

I don't think any more of it, I have enough to occupy me. Exercises to practice, to master, because I will. I do not yet give up hope of some small improvement, of some ease. I will not, cannot give up. I am still getting used to what I can and cannot do, still frustrated so often - simple things take so long, require so much thought and planning, but I will not, cannot give up. My life – if my life has taught me one thing, it is that determination will get you most things, in the end.

He is trying, I know, but he is not naturally patient; nor is he good at watching someone struggle. He wants to help - but I cannot - must not - will not let him. Not with everyday things. And then he is cross, thinks I am being awkward, proud, unreasonable.

Maybe I am.

But - I am so afraid, so lost. 

All our life together, I have been the one to care for him, have thought only of his needs - tried to at least - I do not know what is to become of me - of us. I wish - almost I could wish we were not married. That I could leave - though how, I do not know - rather than him have to bear this.

He is kind, affectionate - well, by his standards he is - generous, but - he has little to say to me and I - what have I to tell him about my days? Nothing that he could want to hear. And so somehow the evenings when we try are worst of all. Worse than the long days alone, worse than the nights when he - kindly, affectionately, but so cruelly - leaves me to sleep alone downstairs, in this room that he had redecorated for me. 

This room that was once his study, this room where once, I remember, we loved, and I - I truly believed we were happy.

Now I lie here alone, knowing he sleeps in the bed we shared for so many years, and I - I wish I could leave him rather than carry on like this.

But I dare not, cannot. I never could, and now least of all.

 

 

 

 

It is mid-afternoon, and I am - what am I doing - not much. Reading, desultorily, but I have discovered how much less attractive books are, now that I have all day, every day, than in the years when I had to squeeze in a moment here or there. Somehow all the classics I promised myself I would read when I had time lie untouched, and I flip through trashy romance, or thrillers, depending who is watching. 

So when the doorbell rings, I am almost glad of the distraction, even though I know it is unlikely to be anyone I want to talk to. I had not realised, so busy as I have always seemed to be, just how few friends I have these days - and any I do would be at work. Jacinth would not have brought the children without phoning first, my Legolas is working, all my boys are working. It will be someone collecting for something, or selling something, but - what else have I to do? If they are gone by the time I get to the door - well, I suppose the effort is good for me.

But he is still there when I open it.

He looks at me, and I at him, waiting.

Afterwards, I will think I should have felt something, should have had some intimation. But I do not.

"Yes?" I say. I have learnt to be slow, short of words, clear. 

He looks at me, and then - then he speaks the words that not so very long ago I would have so rejoiced to hear.

"Caradhil?" he asks, and the doubt is a knife in me, reminding me what I have lost, "yes, you must be. I am the son of Meieriel. You remember Meieriel?"

I nod, for long ago as it is - yes, I remember. Meieriel, lovely, smart, witty Meieriel. Meieriel, the guilt has stayed me with me all these years. Meieriel, the girlfriend my parents adored – the girlfriend I ran from when they died, when I – when I, frankly, went a bit mad. The girlfriend whose letters I never answered, never even opened. The girlfriend I never even bothered to inform that I wasn’t coming back. 

I always assumed she would have made a success of her life, had a family, a career – and so, it seems, she has. Meieriel’s son. Well, there’s a thing.

But what, I think, has he to do with me?

My confusion must be clear.

He sighs.

"I nearly wrote," he says, sweeping hand through hair in a gesture I feel I should recognise, but it is not Meieriel’s, nor anyone I can remember from our set, so whose can it be? "but then I had no idea what to say. I thought it might be easier in person – but now I find it isn’t,” he swallows, looks away and back, and then begins.

 

 

 

******

 

 

As is become usual, I pull up outside the house and sit in the car for a long moment, contemplating. Gathering myself together, trying to ready myself for all the lies I will tell again this evening, all the million ways I will hurt him even as I try to help, try to do the right thing. 

It is a beautiful house, I think as I so often do, and then – no. It could be a beautiful house, it was a beautiful house, and I daresay at some point in the future it will be again a beautiful house.

At the moment, it is not. It looks – rundown. The garden is in immaculate condition, as always, but the house itself – I consider it. No. It looks – unkempt. The curtains; some are drawn even though it is a summer evening, light for many hours yet. Those that are open are not – and I frown, for it offends me now I have noticed – they are not evenly pulled, not correctly tied back. The paintwork, and I am horrified to see this, needs touching up; the gutters – I cannot see them, but now I am wondering if they too are in need of cleaning. And, alone, I can bite my lip, thinking room by room what it is like inside, and admitting to myself – it is not any better.

Inside, I know, it is clean, of course it is clean. I – we – pay enough, the work is done, we have used the company for a long while now, we must be one of their best customers. But – there is a difference between a house that is cleaned and a house that is – that is loved. Books lying around, piles of papers that should be attended to, discarded toys, clothes even – that I could live with, have lived with, but this, this which is new – it is hard to describe, even to myself, but there is a constant feeling of – oh, it doesn’t matter.

Our – my – room is the worst. And of course, there is no-one to blame but myself. Thinking of it, I close my eyes once more. My room. I hate it, hate sleeping alone, too much a reminder of those years before my star relit my world – too much a reminder of the months he was in hospital. And he is miserable, downstairs, alone, I know it. He hasn’t said anything, of course he hasn’t, he never would, but he must know it would have cost little more to put in a lift, enable him to easily come back to his own place beside me every night. Or, for that matter, to have made the study – or some other room – a comfortable bedroom for the two of us.

Or I could have sold this place, too large as it really is anyway, and found us somewhere more suitable. Of course, that would have meant accepting that this is forever, that he will not improve – and I am still not sure he is ready for that.

Instead, I chose to separate us. For the best of reasons. I – I have not confessed to him my own situation. He does not know, but if he were to spend every night at my side – and oh how I miss him – he would see the truth. The hours of wakefulness, the sickness, the loss of weight, the – the ill old man that I am become.

And were he to see it – I cannot bear the thought – I cannot bear that he might, I know him so well, he might think that at last he understood why we are now married. Why I finally found the courage to take such a step. 

There would be no truth to it, of course there would not – at least, not in the way that he would think it. Yes, yes, I knew of – of this which is creeping upon me – not when I asked him to marry me, but before we set a date. Still, all it did was shock me, hurry me into the decision that I had avoided for so long, the public declaration that I was still so reluctant to make – but I know my star, I know his deep-rooted belief in his own lack of worth. I know he will read it all as – as simply an insurance policy called in, as a payment in advance, a guarantee of future payments, by me, for his care.

And he will hate himself for being now unable to fulfill, as he sees it, his side of the bargain.

Oh my star, my beloved, I know how you will react, I know you so well – and so how can I help but try to hide my infirmity from you? 

I love you – and yet now, now when you most need me, now when I finally, finally have become able to say the words that for so long you dared not even dream of hearing – now I am unable to prevent myself from hurting you more. All I can do is choose – whether to hurt you by the truth, or by deception.

And I choose deception.

But this is nothing new, this has been my life for months now. He will have heard the car, I cannot have more than a few moments, it is not fair. I gather myself, I open the car door, and I begin to walk towards the house – and the door opens, and for an instant I think I have been transported back two decades – or that I dream.

The boy – young man – who pushes past me does not even see me. I am nothing to him – and by that if by nothing else I know I am not in the long ago. I turn, but he is in a hurry; he is, I do not know, angry or upset, or – or somesuch – and gone, down the drive and out onto the street and away, leaving my front door swinging.

For all that my curiosity tells me to follow him, I have not the energy, nor the speed, and besides – besides – my star must be inside, and what – what has been going on?

Inside, I stop, and for a long moment, I stand, willing myself to gather my courage, to approach, to reach out, to speak, to find within me the words – there must be some words – that will help. 

It is rare, I think absently, to have such a long moment in which to observe my beloved. A long moment when he is unaware of my presence, yet is neither asleep, nor as too often these last months, unconscious. Oh my star, you also are become – not quite old, no, but no longer strong, no longer energetic, yet I will not use the word withered, cruel as it is. My star you are become – tired. And today, it would seem, today you are sad.

He does not weep – he rarely weeps, my steadfast, my stoic, my uncomplaining helpmeet – he simply sits, head bowed, all the pain he feels – and still I do not know why – on his face, his eyes closed, his hands clenched in his lap.

“Caradhil?” I ask, and he looks up at me, and, as ever, instantly his face changes, even now, the light shines through him, and I – I feel my courage desert me. I do not ask, do not enter into that dark place with him; instead I smile, falsely, lying once more, say, “how was your day? Have you eaten, or is dinner left in the oven?” and watch as he follows my lead, as our lies and deception hold us as tight as a safety-harness, keeping us away from the abyss of all the unspoken pain and terror of the future.

 

*******

 

 

All through the meal – the pretence of a meal – I have done nothing this day to leave me with an appetite, he – well, I daresay watching me attempt to eat is offputting, at least it seems to be to him these days – all through the semblance of a meal which is now all that is left to us to do in an evening, we talk. Or rather, he talks, small remarks about his day, about the boys, their families, things he heard on the radio, and I do my best to answer, to contribute something. Only my speech is slow now, and unclear, and my thoughts become tangled even as do my words. So, as is now our pattern, he talks, and I merely listen.

There is so much I want to say, to tell him, tonight especially, but I cannot. Even had I the words, the ability to speak, I do not know if I would have the courage. How could I, how could I ever have said – I have done much amiss, more than I knew. How could I have said – I am not what you think me, I am, it seems, a liar, and that most pathetic and despicable of things. How could I have said this?

“I love you,” I say instead, and if it is unusual for me to say it, it is doubly so that I should announce it like this, in the kitchen, his back to me as he waits for the kettle to boil, “I love you.”

It seems to me that I had more to say, that I wanted to – to spill out so much, or at the least try, but he turns, and I cannot speak to his face, only to his back, and now, now he is walking towards me, and holding me, and I – I cannot speak at all like this. But perhaps I don’t need to, not for a long moment.

“I love you, my star,” he says, and then his face changes, and I see the words die on his lips, die and be replaced as he looks at me, “you are tired. Come, let’s get you to bed,” and I ache for that short time when words like that could be spoken as lovers speak them.

Never again.

“Not really tired,” I say, and then, for the world has not, it seems, left me entirely without courage this day, “come with me. Please. Lie with me.”

Just for a short while. Let me pretend that all is as it once was, as I dreamt so long it might one day be, as it was for those few perfect months. Let me lie beside you like lovers do, even if so much else is gone, never to come again, even if you can no longer desire me, let me pretend. I have lived so long on pretence and dreaming, let me have it once again.

 

 

*****

 

 

And so, as he asks, we lie in bed together. His bed, he cannot manage stairs – and I – I would help him, were it only that, but I – I cannot bear for him to see our room, my room, and read the truth that is written in every line of it. In the dark like this, we seem close – we are close – yet not, not as once we were. Not as I so hoped we would now be, honest and open to each other. 

He has said nothing of his visitor, and in the end – in the end I find I must ask.

“Who was that leaving the house – that young man?” I say, and when he breathes slow and deep, I wonder if he now will feign sleep rather than speak of it. But no, it seems not, my star is not that changed.

“He was,” he stops, breathes, and I realise he is searching for the right words, for a way to say it, “he was someone, someone I – I share genes with.”

He stops again, and I – I wonder if my instant thought is wrong, if there is a simple explanation for this. Genes are funny things, the way resemblances go, looping through a bloodline, peeping out here, a glimpse there, and a clear shout, a carbon copy somewhere else.

“A cousin – cousin’s child,” I say, and then, knowing if it is so, then he has lied, “a nephew?”

He moves against me, and I know he is biting his lip, and I am – unnerved. My star, what – what have you left unsaid all these years?

For what sin, I suddenly wonder, was all your love and care for my boys an attempted expiation? What, oh my star, what is the truth of you?

So many years I believed one thing – that you were happy enough, that you loved my boys, that I was, to some extent, pleasing to you, that you appreciated the comfort I could give you – but missed your freedom. Kept your freedom even, in some underhand way, taking time out from our home to get what you missed – for with no evidence, I assumed you missed a lifestyle of which I know little, know only the reputation. A clubbing, out all night, easy come easy go, life of ready shags, of man after man. 

Over and over you have told me, my star, that I am everything to you, that you love me and only me, that you never wanted another, never looked at another once we met. And indeed, much I would give to believe that, as you think I do. 

But I am no fool, my sweet star. I have seen your photos of life before we met, I have seen the men – I will not say boys, though to my eyes now they are, but they were not, not in your estimation, not in their own, and most importantly, not in the eyes of the law. Oh, the photos you have are all very innocent, friends hanging out together and having a good time – you would never have kept any other sort in the house around my sons. But one has only to look and think, and another story is there, it seems to me. A story of a most enjoyable life, of the life that ran through your inheritance in months, that left you needing a job and reluctant to return to British values, British weather.

I know, as perhaps others that you tell this love-story of your life to do not, just how long it was between the day we met and the day you came into my home, the day you came into my life, the day I – I admitted, or began even to admit, to myself what it was that I wanted. That my grief for my beloved wife did not ease, did not cease, but – changed. Became a memory of what was, a sadness for what we shared, no longer a despairing cry of how can I go on, how can I do this, what am I without you, my love, my sweet – because I began to see that I could go on, that I could become something else, someone that had she lived I would never have been. Not better, not worse, merely – different. I know how long that was for me, that short eternity, and I know therefore, what others perhaps do not, how long it was that you waited. 

More importantly, I know – or suspect – that you did not wait. At least, not as you would imply you waited. I know you, my star, and I know your well-trained conscience.

It matters not. What was, was; what happened, happened. One thing I do now know; that I was wrong to think you were not in love with me as I with you. That I was wrong to doubt your words, your faith, your absolute and unswerving devotion, your loyalty.

Enough of this. I doubted you once, I should no longer. And yet – and yet – there are layers to you that even now, I am not sure I have reached.

Who was that man?  
That man in the hospital, that carer – why did he look at you so strangely? Why the resentment in his eyes – for you, for me, for both of us, I do not know. Much would I give to believe it simply the dislike of – say – an evangelical for a couple of queers. But – I wonder, my star, I wonder.

Ruthless you can be, I know very well, ruthless and determined, and I wonder sometimes. What of you is there that I know not?

Enough of such.

Tonight I have another question, and oh my star, answer me. Do not make me suspect and wonder and even doubt. 

Finally, he speaks again.

“His name is – it does not matter. He is – he is the son of my girlfriend,” and my lack of shock must show, we know each other so well, “yes, before I came away – ran away – before I – when I was still at college, I had a girlfriend. She was – very lovely. Very smart. Clever. You – you would have liked her. I liked her. I – I did not love her. As to whether she loved me – how can I tell at such a distance? She never said. But then – perhaps she could have, perhaps – who can tell what would have been?”

Long it is since he spoke like this, since I heard so many words, so many thoughts come tumbling out. And they are not clear, not as eloquent as once they would have been, but enough, it is enough for me to understand. And yes, how can one know – how can I know, my star, what is the truth of you?

“Her son?” I ask, and the question is there, in my head if not my words, and we know each other so well, that he sighs, and answers as best he can, or as best he will, which is all I can expect.

“Her son.”  
There is a pause, and I wait, patient, hoping that he merely gathers his words, for so he has told me it can feel, gathering them up ready to send out into the world, lining them on his tongue, practicing in his head before he tries to say them aloud.

“And mine, so he says, so she has told him.”

Well, really, I think, you were at college together – can you not work it out? Honestly, my star, I don’t think you even need to ask his birthday, unless you have a brother or cousin I have never previously heard of – he is your son. 

“I told him no. He is not my son. I am not his father. He may have my genes – I could have been his father. But I haven’t been. I can’t start now,” he shifts slowly, no longer graceful, no longer at ease in his body, “I could have been – I would have been. But I was not. It is too late.”

I do not know what to say. 

Somewhere within me my heart seems to crack, for is this – is this my star? Is this shallow thing the man I have loved so long, so well? 

“He has a father. He has – he has just died, the man who brought him up – that is why he has come looking. But I – I cannot be whatever it is he wants. Not now.”

And I understand. My heart mends, and yet it aches, aches for my beloved star, that this is how he sees himself, this is all he thinks he now is worth.

“No,” I say slowly, “no, you can’t be what you might have. But – if he is hurt, and lonely perhaps, and – beloved, can you not be something else?”

Because my star, the one thing I have always believed about you, the one constant, the one truth that is you beyond all else, has been your love for my boys. Your care, your – abominable word – parenting – is the reason Legolas is as sane as he is, not to mention the fact that the other two didn’t strangle him or push him out of a tree. I love my boys, but I am well aware of their, and my, failings.

So, can you not find something in you for this young man? This boy.

Your boy.

He is silent a long while, thinking, I suppose, and I – I am a tired, sick, old man, lying in comfort for the first time these many months. I fall asleep next to him, easier than I have this long while.

 

 

*****

 

Can I not be something else, you ask me.

No, my beloved, my sweet love, no I cannot. 

I have, oh my love, my dear love, enough to do, it feels to me, trying to pull myself back, to claw my way into the life I have now – into the strength I will need. 

You think I do not know, oh my lord, my prince, my king, but I know. I know why it is you do not sleep, do not eat, why you look tired, why you pretend to me that you work as you ever did when in reality less than half your time is needed in the office. I know that you are setting things up to retire – no. Not to retire. Retirement is what I always hoped for us. You are setting things up to – to die.

You are ill.

I know it, you know it.

But we do not speak of it. You think I know not, and I – I will not say the words aloud. If you have the courage to pretend, if that is what you would have from me, then that is what I will do.

But no, Thranduil, ruler of my world, now I have not the time or energy to care for another, though it half-kills me to turn my son – my son – the son I never thought to have – away. 

The son who – ah dear god forgive me – the son who I never knew existed. The son I have wronged so much for so long, by my omission, by refusing to read those letters she wrote me. The son that – admit it, Caradhil – that once I would have given anything to hear existed. The son that – had I known before I met you, I would have returned to England to be with. Would have married his mother, and what a lie that would have been – yet perhaps, at some level, in some way, we could have made it work. 

The son who now I must, it seems to me, wrong still more. Wrong this time by a sin of commission. The son I must send away, must deny. 

Because I have no more in me than this.

I love you.

That is the truth of me. That and only that.

All else, all else I would turn away, all else I will let burn now. Now at the last, I would have nothing and no-one but you.

And I cannot say it, for you cannot bear to hear the truth acknowledged, and in this, as in all things, I will be ruled by you.


End file.
